Luigi Mangione ‘Folk Hero’ Narrative Starts to Fall Apart

The theories proclaiming Luigi Mangione as a modern-day folk hero are falling apart amid new reports about the suspected gunman’s past, as a motive in the shocking assassination of a health care executive remains elusive nearly two weeks later.

What’s New

A UnitedHealth Group spokesperson confirmed to Newsweek Thursday that neither Mangione—the 26-year-old who has been charged in the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson—nor his parents were insured by UnitedHealthcare, raising questions as to whether Mangione was targeting Thompson because of a claim denial.

Reddit posts written by Mangione also suggest that the spinal surgery he received last year was successful, further undercutting theories that a medical condition played into his alleged decision to fatally shoot Thompson outside a Hilton hotel in Manhattan earlier this month.

When reached for comment, UnitedHealth Group referred Newsweek to its statement from last week. The health conglomerate said Thursday that UnitedHealthcare, its insurance division, approves and pays about 90 percent of medical claims upon submission.

Why It Matters

In the wake of Thompson’s death, there was an outpouring of frustration aimed at the nation’s insurance industry, particularly UnitedHealthcare, which is the largest and most profitable health insurer in the U.S. Mangione also received significant support from Americans of all political stripes who saw the shooting as justified vengeance against the industry executives who oversee the companies that deny thousands of medical claims each year.

Immediately after the shooting, a flurry of social media sleuths told their followers they would not help authorities identify the gunman. After Mangione was arrested and charged last week, online supporters raised more than $110,000 for his legal defense fund.

What to Know

But it’s unclear whether Mangione may be the folk hero his supporters are making him out to be.

After undergoing surgery in 2023, 26-year-old had told users on Reddit that while it was “painful for the first couple days” and there was still a road to recovery, he had stopped taking pain medication by day seven and that “it was way less of a big deal than I had anticipated.”

“The surgery wasn’t nearly as scary as I made it out to be in my head, and I knew it was the right decision within a week,” he wrote in one post.

At the same, new reporting about Thompson suggests that the executive was not the villain many online have made him out to be. The Washington Post reported this weekend that Thompson played a major role early in the pandemic in making sure that COVID patients could access the billions of dollars that Congress set aside for emergency payments.

“Federal officials could not find a partner that could get the money to organizations that desperately needed it,” the Post reported. “Thompson told federal officials that his massive company’s banking arm could rush emergency funds to hospitals and other providers — and said it could be done within a week.”

“More than $135 billion would be distributed through the UnitedHealth-backed fund, which was credited with keeping thousands of hospitals and other health-care providers afloat during the pandemic,” it said.

What People Are Saying

Richard Hanania, conservative commentator and president of the think tank Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, said on X: “Washington Post on Brian Thompson as a well liked, hard working man who tried to provide better service to customers while avoiding the public limelight… And also for that, he was killed by Luigi.”

Cliff Lampe, professor of information and associate dean for academic affairs in the School of Information at the University of Michigan, told Forbes: “It’s hard to interpret for every individual what these memes mean to them, but in general they seem to represent a frustration with perceived inequities in the healthcare system and to some extent a much broader discontent with growing wealth inequality. Of the memes I’ve seen, many seemed embedded more in a type of wry class consciousness.”

Stephen Parente, a finance professor at the University of Minnesota and former Trump administration health official who worked with Thompson during the pandemic, told the Post: “In the face of so many people saying this can’t be done, honestly, Brian was the guy who made it happen.”

Anonymous donor who contributed $1,000 to a GiveSendGo for Mangione’s legal fund: “For my mother. A victim of the insurance industry. RIP. To Mr. Mangione: thank you for your sacrifice. May others follow in your footsteps of bravery and justice. For all who were a victim of the injustices of insurance industry: ‘Eternal rest grant them O Lord and may your everlasting light shine upon them.'”

What Happens Next

Despite the changing dynamics surrounding Thompson’s death, UnitedHealthcare continues to face criticisms about its rate of claim denials.

Patient advocacy groups have blamed Thompson, who was one of UnitedHealth Group’s highest-paid executives, for the denials that were issued under his leadership.

ProPublica also published an investigative report Friday that revealed the insurance giant was removing providers of applied behavior analysis from its network and limiting children’s access to the treatment—a move that mental health and autism advocates have decried as “unconscionable” and suggested could be illegal.

“They’re denying access to treatment and shrinking a network at a time when they clearly know that there is an urgent need,” Karen Fessel, whose Mental Health and Autism Insurance Project helps families access care, told the ProPublica.

UnitedHealth Group declined Newsweek‘s request for comment on the internal documents obtained by ProPublica.

Mangione remains in a Pennsylvania state prison, where he is being held without bail as he fights extradition to New York. He has retained Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a high-profile criminal defense lawyer, to represent him in New York, where he is facing murder charges.

Mangione is scheduled to appear in a preliminary hearing in Pennsylvania on December 23 for charges related to the gun and fake ID in his possession at the time of his arrest.